Waking to the Light

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 60:1-6   Matthew 2:1-12

Have you ever had a “wake up call”? … A moment when you realize that something about your life needs to change? 

I had a little one just this past week while we were visiting with Carrie’s family in Illinois.  As usual, I took a book along with me to the farm….  You know, to enjoy reading in the quiet evenings when the children were asleep and there was no housework to do.  But as often happens, I didn’t even get around to pulling it out of my bag.

It wasn’t that I was busy with family plans or that the children had sleeping issues that kept me occupied.  I simply got caught up in watching movies and football games and the odd game of solitaire on the computer … and the free time got used up.  It’s the sort of thing that often seems to happen when I’m on vacation.
 

When I got home, I found an email notification from the library that the book was overdue which wouldn’t really have been a problem except … except that this is the third or fourth time that I have gotten a notice like that for this same book.  I have been checking it out, renewing it, returning it, and checking it out again for about five months now … and I’m only about halfway through.   And I realized as I read that message that it’s not the book or my schedule that have made the reading take so long.  I have simply been spending too much time … wasting too much time in front of the TV and the computer. 
 

So, I have made a resolution this year to watch less and play less and read more.  Not such a momentous change, I’ll grant you, but I hope that it helps to engage my mind and add richness to my days.

 

I have a friend who had a much more significant wake up call.  Ryan and I both moved into North Manchester in seventh grade.  As the two new kids we developed a friendship quickly.  He and I and one other boy, Tim, became a tight-knit threesome.  We had many of the same classes.  We were in band together.  And we all played on the tennis team in high school.  Outside of our school activities, we spent a lot of time together as well, and our conversations ranged across all of the major topics of world events, religion, cultural issues and the less weighty subjects that tend to occupy the High School mind.

When we all went to the same college, our friendship and our conversations continued.  After college, though, our paths went separate ways.  Tim and I both went into Brethren Volunteer Service.  Ryan went out to do his Mormon mission.

 

Let me be clear that I had and have no judgmental feelings about the Church of Latter Day Saints.  I have known many members of that faith, and I have found them to be good people for the most part.  If they are different from the rest of us, in my experience it is only because on the whole they tend to be kinder and healthier than the average American.
 

If you have met Mormons on mission, I am sure that it has probably been when you have answered your door and unsuspectingly found two young men dressed in black pants and white shirts with name tags on their chest, questions in their eyes, and backpacks full of The Book of Mormon.  These young men spend a year walking the streets of cities and town across the country knocking on doors, sharing their faith, and inviting others to join them.  At least that is how it is supposed to work.  Typically, I expect, they spend a good deal more time walking and knocking and less time sharing since many people prefer not to answer the door when they see who it is.

Ryan’s experience was somewhat different.  He did his mission in Korea, and in preparation he through nine months of intensive study, learning language and customs and delving more deeply into the teachings of the church.  Thus equipped, he spent two years in Korea where he walked the streets, knocked on doors, and shared his faith.

The first Christmas after he returned, the three of us got together to catch up.  As usual, we feel back into each other’s company easily, and we chatted easily about the past.  Eventually, we got around to sharing stories of the past few years, and that’s when I noticed the change.  Ryan was much more guarded than he had been about his thoughts.  As he shared, we discovered that he had exchanged up his long-held political aspirations for a desire to return to less developed world and join in his church’s development and assistance work.  Visiting so many different homes, experiencing a different kind of hospitality, and seeing so many different kinds of need had birthed a new passion in his heart.  He had, as he put it, “woken up and seen the light.”  It had changed him … changed the meaning of his life, and he was committed to following where the light led.

 

Three other men who followed a light are celebrated around the world every year on this Sunday.  The official name of the day is Epiphany – a celebration of the revelation of Christ to the world.  In many places it’s called Three Kings Day – a much more direct name for recognizing the gift-bearing visitors from the East.

The holiday includes all different kinds of traditions ranging from small shoes placed outside the door for treats to special cakes with prizes baked right in to parades with elaborate floats.  However the day is marked, it focuses on the arrival of the three kings (or, more accurately, three wise men) who traveled for years to find and worship the new king that was born in Bethlehem.  We honor them and remember their gifts, and then we leave them behind as we move on out of the Christmas season and into the new year.

I have been wondering this year how their lives changed.  Here were three wise men who watched the skies and read prophesies and noticed that something big was happening.  That doesn’t make them particularly notable though … nothing worth the celebrations they receive each year.  There were many, many other such men scattered around the ancient world – men who were very learned and whose knowledge had earned them fame and riches.  They were part of a group that practiced an art that was ancient before the time of Moses – a group that studied prophesies and the movements of the heavens in order to divine the future, and there would have been others who would have read the same signs and reached the same conclusions as these three. 

No, it wasn’t their knowledge or insight that made them special.  It was the fact that they made the journey.  None of the others packed up and trekked off to Bethlehem, but these three did.  Something shook them out of their everyday lives.  Something woke them up to the great transformation that was coming into the world, and they dropped everything else that they were doing.  They left behind all their other work.  They left behind their homes and their families (perhaps even their kingdoms if they really were kings).  And they followed the star rising in the West. 

I have trouble understanding how or why they would have done that.  It seems unbelievable that they would have left so much behind simply to discover if their predictions were true – even when those predictions pointed to an event that might transform the world.  I don’t think I would have done it, not without a greater sense of certainty.  But then again, my passion lies with my family, the needs close at hand, and our lives together.  Perhaps their passions had a greater scope and that’s what led them to undertake their quest.

Whatever their reasons, these three extraordinary men followed the light of the star and discovered the baby Jesus … and wonder.  I can’t imagine that they went back to their homes unchanged.  They had traveled for years.  They had been invited into the humble home of the greatest king to walk the earth.  They had heard the voice of God speaking to them.  Their lives must have been different … richer.  I imagine that as they looked around them with a sense of fresh wonder in their wise old eyes, as they saw the world in a new and different way, I imagine they felt like they had finally woken up.

 

We don’t have a star to wake us up.  We don’t need one.  That time is over and gone, and the light shining over Christ’s birth has faded away.  But the light of Christ’s life and teachings still shines into the world, calling us to live differently.  Calling us to love our enemies and forgive.  Calling us to care for the poor, the sick, and those around us living on the edge.  Calling us to a different set of passions and priorities – to a different way of living than is taught by the world around us.

Many of us have lived our entire lives bathed in that light.  We have heard the stories of Jesus life again and again.  We have listened to Sunday School teachers and preachers talk about the teachings of Christ every Sunday.  We have been encouraged over and over to leave behind the habits of the world and follow the call to live differently.  And it has all become unremarkable – become no more than the background of our lives – because it has always been there.  Living in the light of the good news – immersed in the promise of Christ’s love – we don’t see the wonder of it all very well.

We move in and out of Christmas, celebrating the coming of the light of life, but we are not moved by it all very often.  We enjoy the gatherings of family and friends … the sharing of gifts … the singing of hymns in candlelight.  And then we put away the decorations and return to our day-to-day living without much having changed.

I think that we (all of us) could use something of a “wake up call” – something to retune our senses so that we can see the light anew.  Or maybe we don’t need anything to wake us up.  Maybe we just need to rediscover a sense of passion. 

Passion called the wise men to the journey. 
 

Passion moved Ryan to embrace the needs of people living half a world away.
 

Passion once inspired each of us to embrace the commitment of discipleship.

Let us make a resolution this year – each one of us … and all of us together.  Let us recommit ourselves to fully embracing the promise of Christ’s new way of living … to exploring what it really means for our lives … to taking it in and living it out.  Maybe, in the process, we’ll find ourselves kneeling before the Christ child and we will arise changed and awakened to joy and wonder.